our American Church have set apart for the sacred and responsible position.” We add, Thus shall it be done to _the colored man_ whom the Methodist Episcopal Church delights to honor on slave soil, where prejudice against the race grew as rank as wild weeds. The election and ordination of Bishop Burns was not a subterfuge, for the Church elected another colored man to the episcopacy—Rev. John W. Roberts, in 1866—one year after the war closed. He was consecrated in St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church, in New York City, June 20th of that year. With the interests of the race at heart, what more could she have done? But the advance steps already taken by the Church on that question were twisted by those who opposed the Church in her efforts to do God’s will toward the downtrodden race, into every shape but the proper one. The cry still went up from at least two sources that the Church was not willing to recognize the colored ministry and members within her borders. The colored members within the Church where such attacks were made still felt that a further step _must_ be taken by the Church to save the colored membership. So there came up to that General Conference from the colored members within the Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New Jersey Conferences one or more memorials, all of which were referred to a special committee, which reported as follows: “The committee to whom were referred the memorials of colored members within the bounds of the Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New Jersey Conferences, after due consideration, report the following for the adoption of the conference, and recommend that it be inserted in the Discipline as a distinct chapter, entitled, “CHAPTER VIII. OF THE RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES OF OUR COLORED MEMBERS. “1. Our colored preachers and official members shall have all the privileges which are usual to others in quarterly conferences, where the usages of the country do not forbid it. And the presiding elder may hold for them a separate quarterly conference when in his judgment it shall be expedient. “2. The bishop or presiding elder may employ colored preachers to travel and preach, when their services are judged necessary: _Provided_, that no one shall be so employed without having been recommended by a quarterly conference.